Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Goals of Chekist Regime and Criminal World in Russia Now ‘Completely Coincide,’ Portnikov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 16 – Those
Russian officials who came out of the KGB have not struggled with the criminal
world as they did with the CPSU apparatus in the past, Vitaly Portnikov says.
Instead, “they have preferred to become part of this criminal world because the
main goals of the Chekists and the criminals – power and money – completely coincide.”

As a result, the Ukrainian
commentator says, “all the rest – the beautiful slogans about ‘the Third Rome,’
rising from one’s knees, ‘sacred Crimea,’ ‘Ukrainian fascists,’ all the
adventures in Georgia, the Donbas or in Syria -- are only a smokescreen
designed to conceal form Russians and the rst of the world the simple and
boring truth – Russia is ruled by bandits.”

Indicative
of the importance of this question are the appearance of new reports that cast
doubt on the comfortable assumption that “power in Russia is in the hands of
Chekists, people from the force structures, who were able to monopolize
positions and money after the retirement of Boris Yeltsin.”

In
fact, Portnikov says, Aleksey Navalny’s investigation of the criminal business
ties of Russian prosecutor general Yury Chayka show, the Chekist world and the criminal
world are not at odds as many have thought but rather have become fused in a
single grouping based on common values.

Navalny’s
research reaches the same conclusion that two Spanish prosecutors, Jose Grindi
and Juan Corrau, do about the fusion of power and crime in Russia. They report
that this fusion began even before Putin came to power, and they name those who
straddle what many had supposed was a divide.

On
the basis of these findings, Portnikov says, one must conclude that “the
Chekists did not begin to struggle with the criminal world as they had for
years with the party apparatus.” Instead, those who came from the KGB and
siloviki “preferred to become part of this criminal world.”

That
is tragedy for Russia and a danger for the rest of the world because this
criminalization of the state or the stratification of criminality means that
the Kremlin can and does use criminal methods to advance its goals and the
criminal world uses the state to advance its parallel ones.